Tesla will disclose Wednesday the most tangible data point yet showing the impact to its business from the polarizing activities of its chief executive officer and largest shareholder Elon Musk, whose close relationship with President Donald Trump led many on Wall Street to warn about “woes” for the electric vehicle maker.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.
At about 9 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Tesla will report how many vehicles it delivered during 2025’s first three months, a crucial proxy for how the company performed during the period ahead of Tesla’s earnings report later this month.
Consensus analyst forecasts call for the company to report 408,000 Q1 deliveries, according to FactSet, a 5% increase from the 387,000 deliveries in the same period last year.
But more recent breadcrumbs indicate Tesla is far more likely to report a year-over-year delivery decline.
Over the last month, analysts at leading investment banks Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS all slashed their Q1 delivery forecast to between 351,000 and 375,000, and prediction markets also lean negative, as Kalshi projects the company will disclose 353,000 Q1 deliveries, a 9% year-over-year decline.
If Tesla reports 353,000 or fewer deliveries, that’d be a historically bad result, topping Q1 2024 as the worst annual growth since at least 2017 (Tesla’s investor relations website only has quarterly delivery data dating back to 2016).
The potential weakening of sales follows reports Tesla sales declined dramatically across the world at the start of the year, most notably in the European Union tied to Musk and Trump’s targeting of the bloc and China, where Tesla faces increasingly stiff competition.
“The anti-Musk and brand issues are clearly at play and a major factor in this weak 1Q delivery number,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives explained in a recent note to clients.
“We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly,” JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman wrote in a March 12 note to clients, referring to the backlash against Musk, who donated $288 million toward Republican causes last year, spurning widespread protests and vandalism of Tesla vehicles nationwide.
Shares of the ever volatile Tesla surged 6% Tuesday morning, leading a broader technology stock recovery. Tesla and the broader market have both swung wildly in recent weeks as Trump plans to brandish his most severe tariffs yet Wednesday. Musk is arguably the most powerful person in the Trump administration other than the president, but tariffs are a major headwind for Tesla, as the automaker sources its parts globally and brings in more than half of its revenue abroad.
27%. That’s how much Tesla stock is down since Jan. 2, the date of the company’s last quarterly delivery report, even after Tuesday’s bounce. Musk said Sunday the slide is a “big deal” and is a result of “massive pressure on me, and Tesla I guess, to you know, I don’t know, stop” with his White House role and outspoken support of right-wing political parties globally. The stock is down more than 40% from its all-time high set in December as investors speculated lax regulation from the Trump administration could help unlock the company’s autonomous driving initiative.
“Tesla's softer auto deliveries are emblematic of a company in the transition from an automotive 'pure play' to a highly diversified play on AI and robotics,” explained Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas last week, laying out the case Tesla stock can still surge despite the likely softness in its core electric vehicle business.
Musk is by far the richest person in the world with a $350 billion net worth, according to our latest calculations.